CPA's Winning Validity Defending Case for Foreign Client Selected as Exemplary Case of Beijing Intellectual Property Court 2019

On 23 April 2020, Beijing Intellectual Property Court (BIPC) announced during a press conference that 15 IP cases had been selected as exemplary cases of year 2019 from the 23,682 cases it concluded during the year. From these cases, guiding opinions in respect of some significant legal issues were derived.

On the list of these exemplary cases was a patent invalidation administrative lawsuit handled by China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd. (CPA) on behalf of a European client, which was one of the 3 patentability and validity related cases selected by BIPC for the year. In this case, CPA successfully represented the client in defending the validity of its communication patent.

The significance of this case lies in the court's explication of the criterion for disclosure in the description. The court specified that "In light of the requirement for sufficient disclosure in the description, which embodies the core principle of "disclosure in exchange for protection" of the patent system, and the common practice of communication protocols in the field, the judgment on sufficiency of disclosure should be based on the perspective of a person skilled in the art. If the person skilled in the art, on the basis of the recitations of the description, is able to implement the technical solution of the invention or the utility model, solve the technical problem, and achieve the technical effect, the disclosure of the description should be deemed as sufficient." The court's ruling was in favour of our client, finding that its patent is in line with the requirement for sufficient disclosure in the description.